Stubborn as a Rock
by PlotbunnyChariot
Summary: When a young child asks Toph a question at a charity event, she replies in a way no one has ever seen before-earth bending style. A story showing light through the darkness, even the darkness of the earth under your feet. Oneshot. Please read and review!


_Stubborn as a Rock_

"Bring it on, Twinkletoes!"

A huge chunk of rock shot through the air, just barely blocked by a twirling figure dressed in orange and yellow.

"You're gonna have to do better than that, Toph!"

With a twist of his body, the orange-clad figure picked out a boulder of his own and launched it at the girl dressed in green. With a quick jab of her fingers, she dropped into the ground and jumped back up a second later, the boulder completely missing her and crashing into the earth behind her. The boy's face looked shocked.

Toph snickered. "I can develop new styles too, Aang," she called, one of her signature grins spreading across her face. "If you can dodge, so can I."

Aang laughed. "Alright then, if you wanna play it that way..." With a leap and a slam into the ground, he sent a massive shockwave Toph's way.

She closed her unseeing eyes as she felt the rumble in the ground, breathing in the satisfying sound and silvery sight of it, learning everything about it. She didn't move an inch.

Instantly, she could hear the yells of several voices not far away.

"Get out of there!"

"It's coming right for you!"

"Miss Toph, move!"

Right before the earthquake slammed into her body, Toph jumped...and rode it. Moving her arms quickly and close to her body, she changed the curve of the force and let it run straight towards Aang. Through the moving earth at her feet, she could feel his eyes widen in shock. Too late, she had crashed into him, and he went flying as only a true air-bender could do.

She leapt off her moving chariot of earth and felt her feet slap into the ground with satisfaction. "Gotcha there, Twinkletoes," she announced, still wearing her grin on her face.

"You sure did, Toph," Aang said admiringly, high-fiving his earth-bending teacher. "I'll admit it, you got me this time, but you won't next!"

Toph laughed in response and made herself a chair out of the earth with a couple quick taps of her feet. "That's what you think," she said, sitting in her chair and using more earth-bending to make it a recliner. "Now, kids," she continued, stretching out comfortably as only Toph could do, "Do you have any questions?"

Instantly hands shot into the air from their audience. She and Aang had agreed to do an earth-bending match together, to help instruct some orphans of the war on both the "awesomeness of earth-bending," as Toph would put it, and the fact that they could be whatever they wanted to be; after all, she and Aang were still young themselves!

"Mm, you there, the one who's half standing up," Toph selected. The boy looked slightly surprised at her clear ability to 'see', even though he'd just witnessed the match and her incredible skills himself.

"Um, Miss Toph..."

"You can just call me Toph," she interrupted, a smile on her face.

"Um, okay. Uh, Toph...where did you learn to earth-bend like that?"

Toph blinked and swung out of her chair. "You wanna learn where I learned how to earth-bend?"

"Um...yeah." The little boy was shaking just a touch, intimidated by the naturally fierce earth-bending master.

Feeling his shaking, Toph immediately looked down and smiled gently. "Don't freak out," she said, and she could feel his trembling stop immediately in wonder. She looked back up again. "My bark isn't exactly worse than my bite, but either way, you kids have nothing to worry about from me. I just talk a little loud sometimes, that's all."

"Sometimes," Aang muttered under his breath.

Toph sent him a glare and kicked a small sheet of rock into him, causing him to fall on his behind. "Ouch!" he exclaimed, much to the giggles of the little kids.

Toph smirked. "That's what you get for ruining the moment," she informed him matter-of-factly. Turning back to her little questioner, she added, "What's your name?"

He swallowed and replied, "Lee, Toph."

She nodded in approval. "Good strong name," she appraised. "You wanna know how I learned earth-bending? I'll tell you." She proceeded to relate the official story, but then crouched down in front of the little boy and asked, "Now, do you want to hear the other version?"

Aang's head jerked up. Other version?

Lee nodded.

"Okay," Toph replied. "Let's see, how can I put this..." Suddenly, an idea sparked in her mind. "Here, I have a good idea!" she exclaimed.

Backing up several steps, and ushering Aang off the earth platform, she bowed deeply to her audience, gaining giggles and applause. _Wow, _Aang thought, _she can really play to the audience of little kids. Didn't think she had it in her._

Focusing deeply, Toph raised her arms and slammed into the ground with her feet, causing a huge rectangular block of earth rise from the ground, along with several other earthen shapes. "My story," she said, blind eyes in another world, "begins here."

The kids, including Aang, watched in awe as the earth began to move.

Aang recognized the shape of Toph's old house come into view, and they all goggled as little details flowed up the earth, carvings of vines and windows and steps etching themselves into the rock. The ground shivered and reshaped itself into the land Toph had grown up on, complete with hedges carved with individual leaves interweaving together.

"You see this? This used to be my home." Aang and the others watched, entranced, as Toph's feet slid over the earthen pathway to her house. It all looked so real...More earthen figures popped out of the ground, reshaping themselves into Toph's parents and old earth-bending teacher.

"My parents saw me blind at birth, and they instantly thought I'd be weak and helpless all my life. As I grew up, they watched over me as best as they could, but they didn't realize what I needed." Aang drew in a sharp breath as he heard the understanding and closure in Toph's voice that he had never heard before. The kids gazed at the scene as the figures of Toph's parents walked on either side of the real girl herself, the father holding her hand.

"They tried to have an earth-bending teacher teach me the basics, for defense and just in the hope that I wouldn't be so weak and defenseless forever, but they didn't realize I'd already found out how. You heard that story, with the badgermoles; remember how I gave them names?" A few younger kids giggled at the remembrance of the funny story, but most were still totally entranced in the story she was telling currently. They watched as she slipped her hand out of her father's clay replica of one and all three humanoid figures returned to dust.

"I realized that, even though I felt alone in this world, I really wasn't...I began to see things through my earthbending, and I began to visit my badgermole friends more and more, at night. The dark didn't bother me; did you know that even in the dark, there's a lot of light?"

At the feeling of the kids' confusion, the blind earth-bender merely smiled and dragged her foot along the ground, then smashed down with her arms. They all watched as the house scene dropped into the earth it came from and a new one rose up.

Their eyes nearly widened beyond humanly possible limits when they realized what was happening.

Toph's body was working overtime, and they watched as earth rose up, took form, and flew-wings and all. Representations of fireflies, lights blinking between darker and lighter earth and wings fully functional, rose from the air and buzzed about the room. Flowers sprang up out of the ground, their petals huge and their heights far taller than Toph herself. Little specks of earth shot into the air and formed themselves into stars, a larger mass representing the moon. Everyone felt like they had just been transported to a fairy world as they watched huge ladybugs climb on the flowers' stems.

Aang gasped as he realized this was how Toph saw. He knew, in some way, how she saw, but this was different-so different...

Toph's voice echoed through the earthen figures even though her form was hidden, her voice soft and silky, like she was narrating their trip into another world. "I began to see the details of things, everything from how flowers had little dewdrops on them at night to how many spots ladybugs had on their backs. I realized, when I felt the fireflies land near the ground, how much light there was at night to regular people, but how much more I was privileged to see. I used to want to see like a normal person, and I would lie awake at night and cry. But whenever I would dash outside, alone and free, and _see_ the world like I do, I would realize how much vision I _really _had. If I could see normally, I couldn't see exceptionally. And even though it's hard sometimes, I wouldn't have it any other way."

Her audience nearly mourned the fact that her earthen play was coming to a close, returning to the dust from whence it had come, as her flowers shriveled back to the ground and her fireflies landed for the night.

She appeared from the midst of the melting earth, smiling gently. "From there on out, I worked on my earthbending even harder, because that was how I could see. I learned to see light the way only I could-a silvery sort of thing through the earth-and I realized that light comes through all the dark parts of our lives, no matter how black the night might seem. And that, Lee, is how I became an earth-bending master." She smiled wider at the group. "You all can become whatever you want to, even if you have a lot to go through yourselves. You have things that limit you? Then take those things and work through them, and make your limits work for you. All in all, be stubborn as a rock."

Aang's eyes followed Toph as the children clapped wildly and she took a seat again. Even though she had taught him how to see through the earth, he had never fully realized how important that sight was to her. Her presentation had showed him, and all those present, just a touch of the way she saw-and just a touch of how truly amazing she was for conquering the disability that had tried to chain her down.

_Stubborn as a rock, _he thought on his way back to join her, _but lighter than a firefly._

_Fine!_

:) :) :) A Toph Fanfic :) :) :)


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